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From April 12, to May 1, 2013, Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, is curating an exhibit called “When the Lights Go Out.” It is a glow in the dark themed art show where the gallery will be illuminated by black lights! Super fun! Bottleneck is ran by Joseph Bouganim and if you are in the Brooklyn area around then, you should go check out the show and tell him I say hi!

Recently, I experimented with some glow in the dark glass frit, so when I heard about this exhibit I jumped on the chance to use it some more! Here are pictures of my fused glass triptych entitled “Trichromatic Triptych” in natural light, under blacklight, and under no lighting conditions.

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(Note: I accidently flipped the blue and yellow tiles in the natural lighting one. The blue one is in the middle in the other photos. So the blue tile is the one that glows the most.) This fused glass triptych will be fore sale at the gallery, the whole set is $650.00, or $250.00/ea. Each tile is approximately 6″X14.” Displaying them all together takes up about 20″X14″ of space, that is including an inch spacing in between each one.

Here is another collaborative gig poster I did with Austin artist, Clint Wilson. This time we did a promo poster for a Coldplay performance in Houston at the Toyota Center, complete with free tickets to the show. It was amazing! They filmed the show for an upcoming movie. Everyone got bracelets that lit up with LED lights turning the amphitheater into a concave disco ball with the audience becoming part of the performance.

Glass tile prior to firing. Clint Wilson & Tessa Morrison. 2012.

For this project the idea was for Clint and I to combine two different art techniques to create the resulting poster. So we made a fused glass piece together, took a photo, turned it into half-tone color separations, and then printed a silk-screened poster.

This was my first foray with half-tone color separations, I’ve mainly done single color screen printing, and Clint had never worked with fused glass before, so it was definitely a learning experience on both ends. So overall a successful collaboration.

This is my second year taking part in the Iron Fuser Competition at Helios Kiln Glass Studio in Austin, Texas. For the past three years Helios has put this annual juried glass art competition together which has had entrants from all around the United States. The title “Iron Fuser” is a spoof on Iron Chef, seeing that we “cook” glass and are given main ingredients that must be used in creating a piece of art. This year the special ingredients were a sheet of neo-lavender tint, a sheet of custom blue streaky, 6″ of copper wire, and the coolest ingredient of all, glow in the dark frit!

“Aoi Yuki”. 2012. Thanks to Helios for the professional photos.

Here are the pictures of the piece I entered, one in normal lighting and one with the lights turned off! You can go in to Helios Kiln Glass Studio and vote for your favorite piece, the winners will be announced on Friday, June 22nd. Voting ends Friday at 7:00 p.m.!

Here is a fused glass piece I made from “float” glass, a.k.a., your standard window glass. The technique used to create the squid involves kiln carving and glass glazes. It is the logo for local gig poster artist, Clint Wilson. I nicknamed the mascot “Squidly”, inspired I know. Unfortunately this adorable cephalopod broke clear in half, but I was able to fix it with some serious UV glue. You can still see the crack, but its still a fun piece regardless. The dimensions are roughly 13X15″.

Last Wednesday I finished a color theory fused glass workshop at Helios Kiln Glass Studio. The workshop lasted five days from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. The workshop was taught by visiting instructor Richard Parrish from Bozeman, Montana. If you’ve ever seen his work, it is beautifully designed, composed, and executed, which isn’t all too surprising given his being an architect-turned-glass artist.After stopping by the studio last year when he was teaching this same class I came to the conclusion that I had to take it: not only as a general refresher in color theory, but also to better understand how different colored opaque, transparent, and tinted glass interact with one another. (F.Y.I. glass does not mix like paint and can and probably will do weird things if you haven’t experimented enough to know what to expect).The workshop was fun and it was equally involved and labor intensive. I also didn’t realize just how physically and mentally exhausting it could be to stare at bright colors for hours at a time. We had several assignments to complete every day and had access to every color of BullsEye glass, with a few restrictions (no black or white).

We had a great group of people (there were 8 students, including myself) and we all learned as much from each other as we did the instructor. The point wasn’t to make an awesome finished cold-worked piece, but rather learn as much about color interaction as possible. These pictures are of the larger tiles I did after doing numerous smaller test tiles.Richard Parrish will be back to teach a design class as well. I am definitely looking forward to it!

I sat in on a glass fusing class at Helios on Anderson Mill and we were making what they have coined “glass latticework.” It’s a non-traditional technique using strips of glass fused together with large spaces in between. This technique has a more overall organic shape after it is fired than what I generally lean towards with my jewelry and glass art designs, but I figure it’s good to try everything.

Piece prior to fusing.

I forgot to take a picture of the second step before slumping it. So the the pictures on here are the first and third steps of the process: pre-firing and post-slumping. After it slumps it will look like a glass basket of sorts.

It seems that one of my corners came undone during firing, so it didn’t do what I expected. So now I have a glass basket with a long hoop for hanging. Which is a neat accident, as far as accidents go.

One side looks like a human ribcage, complete with upside down xiphoid process.

If you’re interested in learning to make fused glass, check out Helios.com’s Beginners class schedule.

When you create fused glass you never work with an open flame. Its all done in the kiln, but there is glass combing, which is where you open the kiln while it is still at glass melting temperatures and run a metal rake or hook through the glass to get cool effects. Even then, there is not an open flame, there are metal elements in the sides and top (depending on your kiln)producing the heat. This technique is not unlike dragging a knife through the icing on your brownies to create fancy patterns.

This was my first glass combing piece. It consists of pimento red, forest green, marigold, and clear Bullseye glass.

Picture courtesy of Helios Kiln Glass Studio.

The glass in its glowing, molten and pliable state. Photo courtesy of Karen Tarlow.